Tom Thorne

Alison Willetts is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skilful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel and is aware of everything going on around her, but is completely unable to move or communicate. Her condition is called Locked-In Syndrome. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer made his first mistake. Then D. I. Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth; it isn't Alison who is the mistake, it's the three women already dead. An appropriate margin of error is how their killer dismisses them, and Thorne knows they are unlikely to be the last. For the killer is smart, and he's getting his kicks out of toying with Thorne as much as he is pursuing his sick fantasy. Thorne knows immediately he's not going to catch the killer with simple procedure. But with little more than gut instinct and circumstantial evidence to damn his chief suspect, anesthetist Jeremy Bishop, his pursuit of him is soon bordering on the unprofessional. Especially considering his involvement with Anne Coburn, Alison's doctor and Jeremy's close friend.

It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at London's Euston station, followed her home on the tube, strangled her to death in front of her child. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at the back of King's Cross station. It is a grisly coincidence that eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day. It is Detective Inspector Tom Thorne who sees the link and comes to a horrifying conclusion. This is not a serial killer that the police are up against. This is two of them. Finding the body used to be the worst part of the job, but not anymore. Now each time a body is found, Thorne must live with the knowledge that somewhere out there is a second victim, waiting to be discovered. But whilst the methods might be the same, the manner of the killings is strikingly different. Thorne comes to realize that he is hunting two very different killers. One is ruthless and in control, while his partner in crime is submissive, compliant, terrified. Thorne must catch a man whose need to manipulate is as great as his need to kill, a man who will threaten those closest to Thorne himself, a man who will show him that the ability to inspire terror is the deadliest weapon of all.

"X" marks the spot of a vicious killer, his calling card the letter carved on his victims' backs. While the killings are morbid, they also offer detective Tom Thorne plenty of clues. This is turf warfare between North London gangs; organized crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch. Thorne also agrees to help out ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain on an old murder case involving the immolation of a schoolgirl. But soon the two separate investigations begin to fuse into one new, very nasty riddle involving a murderous family that values nothing but its own power. When an "X" is carved on his front door, Thorne knows these crimes of past and present will soon engulf him, too.

It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car. His wife Donna was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served ten years in prison. But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband. The man she hates with every fiber of her being--the man she paid to have murdered--seems very much alive and well. How is it possible that her husband is still alive? Where is he? Who sent the photo, and why? Detective Inspector Tom Thorne becomes involved in a case where nothing and no one are what they seem. It will take him much further from his London beat than he has ever been before--and closer to a killer who will do anything to protect his new life.

The Crime The customers in a London convenience store are taken captive. Among them is young mother, Detective Helen Weeks. She is told her life depends on the co-operation of one of her colleagues - detective Tom Thorne. The Demand Akhtar is desperate to know what really happened to his beloved son, who died a year before in prison. He is convinced the death was not an accident and forces the one man who knows more about the case than any other, Thorne, to re-investigate. The Twist What Thorne discovers will upend everything he thought he knew about the fate of those he's put away...but will it be enough to fulfill the wishes of a grieving and potentially violent father?

Newly demoted after stepping out of line once too often, and struggling to adjust, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne becomes convinced that a spate of suicides among the elderly in London is something more sinister. His concerns are dismissed by the murder squad he was once part of and he is forced to investigate alone. Now, unable to trust anybody, Thorne risks losing those closest to him as well as endangering those being targeted by a killer unlike any he has hunted before: a man with nothing to lose and a growing list of victims, a man who appears to have the power to make people take their own lives.

In The Bones Beneath, the latest addition to the internationally bestselling Tom Thorne series, Thorne once again must confront Stuart Nicklin, a master manipulator and ruthless murderer. When Nicklin announces that he wishes to reveal the whereabouts of one of his earliest victims and that he wants the cop who caught him to be there when he does it, it becomes clear that Thorne's life is about to become seriously unpleasant. Thorne is forced to accompany Nicklin to a remote island off the Welsh coast which is cut off from the mainland in every sense. Shrouded in myth and legend, it is said to be the resting place of 20,000 saints, and as Thorne and his team search for bones that are somewhat more recent, it becomes clear that Nicklin's motives are darker than could be imagined. The twisted scheme of a dangerous and manipulative psychopath will result in many more victims and will leave Tom Thorne with the most terrible choice he has ever had to make.

Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen's home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect's wife as an old school-friend and returns home for the first time in twenty-five years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have got the wrong man. There is still an extremely clever and killer on the loose and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive.

DI Nicola Tanner needs Tom Thorne's help. Her partner, Susan, has been brutally murdered and Tanner is convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity-that she was the real target. The murderer's motive might have something to do with Tanner's recent work on a string of cold-case honor killings she believes to be related. Tanner is now on compassionate leave but insists on pursuing the case off the books and knows Thorne is just the man to jump into the fire with her. He agrees but quickly finds that working in such controversial territory is dangerous in more ways than one. And when a young couple goes missing, they have a chance to investigate a case that is anything but cold. Racing towards a twist-filled ending, Love Like Blood is another feat of masterful plotting from one of Britain's top crime novelists.

When DI Tom Thorne is called to conduct a routine assessment at the site of a suicide, he expects to be in and out in no time. But when he arrives at the metro station, where a woman named Philippa Goodwin threw herself in front of an underground train, Thorne inexplicably senses something awry and feels compelled to dig deeper. He soon discovers that she was the victim of a callous con-man who preys on vulnerable women, and whose deception plunged Philippa to her end. Thorne enlists DI Nicola Tanner to help him track down the swindler and bring him to justice. But the detective duo gets more than they bargained for when a young man's bludgeoned body turns up on the shore of a nearby seaside town. The two cases come together in a way that neither of the detectives could have foreseen. Brilliantly plotted with a shocking psychological bent, Their Little Secret is another masterful thriller from one of Britain's most beloved crime writers. With twists and turns that will keep listeners guessing until the very end, this is Mark Billingham's most chilling novel yet.

Two boys run into the woods-but only one returns In the summer of 1996, two boys run from a playground into the adjoining woods, but only one comes out. DS Tom Thorne takes on the case-which quickly spirals out of control when two people connected to the missing boy are murdered. As London prepares to host the European Soccer Championships, Thorne fights to keep on top of a baffling investigation while also dealing with the ugly fallout of his broken marriage . . . A prequel to Mark Billingham's acclaimed debut Sleepyhead.